Books and Ashes
by from-girl-to-steel
Summary: The emptiness that had haunted her after watching Helena die in a violent blaze of fire and ash had left her gasping and reeling, scrambling to hold on to anyone, anything that made even a little bit of sense. So she had read. Angsty post-finale fic.


Before Artie had rewound the watch, Myka hadn't known what to feel. The emptiness that had haunted her after watching Helena die in a violent blaze of fire and ash had left her gasping and reeling, scrambling to hold on to anyone, anything that made even a little bit of sense.

So she had read. No printed material in Leena's house could escape Myka's voracious eyes. She devoured book after book, and when she had exhausted the supply there, she was forced to venture out into Univille to check out books at the local library. She picked up ten at a time, dragging along an empty backpack, and returned to the B&B each week, weighted down by the tomes she had selected. The characters and worlds she found in books comforted her, and it was into these things that she retreated. The narratives were often heart wrenching, but they were never filled with beautiful dark-haired time travelling inventors who unexpectedly sacrificed their lives in bewildering turns of nobility.

She couldn't yet weep for Helena, so she instead wept for the loss of the many beautiful, old, precious first editions that the Warehouse had held within its depths.

Almost every moment of every day, Myka had a book open in her hands. She tried not to read during the few meals she shared with Claudia, Pete, Artie, and Leena; but she rarely made it downstairs when Leena called up to her that lunch was ready, or breakfast, or dinner. The balanced, nutritious diet that had taken her close to fifteen years to painstakingly maintain fell apart almost immediately; the only way she could force down the crackers or sticks of celery she usually ate without spiraling down into a whirlwind of guilt and pain was to read.

She read because she couldn't face the anger, the grief, and the immense loneliness that had overtaken her after the explosion. Every time she closed her eyes, she smelled the smoke of the thousands of burning artifacts, and sometimes, on the worst nights, she thought she could detect a trace of burning flesh. The smell made her wretch and shake and gag, made her bolt up in bed in the middle of the night, dry heaving, the image of Helena's beatific smile being consumed by the flames searing the inside of her eyelids.

Myka hardly ever slept anymore.

Instead, she would read until she could no longer physically force her eyes to remain open, only sleeping when her body overrode her brain and shut itself down. Even then, she was awoken night after night by the deafening sound of the bomb blasting everything around her to dust.

But sometimes, sometimes Myka dreamed that Helena had saved herself and the Warehouse. On those nights she would roll over in bed, her body unconsciously expecting Helena to be lying, warm and safe and solid, beside her. And then, feeling the emptiness and the coldness of the sheets under her sleeping palm, she would awaken. In her sleep-addled state she would always briefly wonder where Helena had gone. _Did she go to the bathroom? _

And then.

After a few seconds, after her mind had cleared a bit from sleep, the memories of all she had lost always came crashing back. _Helena. Steve. Mrs. Fredrick. The Warehouse. _

Stunned by the sheer immensity of her grief, she reached over to her bedside table and fumbled for her latest novel. She never cried.

Helena had said that Myka was the one person who knew her better than anyone else. It wasn't until after she was gone that Myka realized the profound truth of Helena's words. They had known each other better than anyone else, somehow, despite all the lies, the betrayal, despite the short time they had gotten to spend together. It wasn't enough time; it could never be enough, not for Myka, not with Helena. But somehow they had learned each other so quickly, so completely. Myka still wondered, though, on the rare occasions she allowed herself to think, about everything she _hadn't_ known about Helena. Myka never doubted that she had known Helena better than anyone else ever had, but she knew that, in a way, those words only spoke to the sad fact that no one had ever really known Helena very well at all.

Helena had rarely spoken of the grief and anger and guilt that still plagued her. There were times when her face became a mask of the past, her eyes glazed, looking backward, and sometimes this brought forth her quiet, almost peaceful remembrances of the daughter she had lost. But other times she remained quiet, retreated to her old room that she still used as an office to be alone, and Myka let her go.

She didn't know how to make it stop.

Myka tried to be there for Claudia, for Pete, for Leena, and for Artie. They had all endured unimaginable loss, not only of their home, but also of their loved ones. But Claudia had retreated into her room to bury herself in her latest technical project, and Pete wandered aimlessly around the Bed and Breakfast, not quite sure what to do with himself now that the Warehouse was gone. Leena threw herself into cleaning, scrubbing every surface in the house until it gleamed, and throwing out boxes upon boxes of junk that had piled up in the attic.

Myka had contemplated leaving, running away, back to Colorado Springs and the familiarity of her father's bookstore. But she had seen how disjointed everyone had become after she left the first time; she knew that leaving them now, when they had already lost so much, could possibly shatter any remaining sense of normalcy they had left. She especially didn't want to do that to Claudia. Everyone in Claud's life had left her; her parents, her brother, Artie, and now Steve, Helena, and the Warehouse, all gone. The only two people she had ever gotten back were Artie and Joshua, but Joshua was at CERN and Artie was growing more and more distant with each passing day. Claudia needed what was left of her newly found family to stay together. So Myka stayed.

No one knew quite what Artie was up to; he disappeared every day after breakfast, muttering cryptically to himself, and returned in the evenings, sometimes even after dinner had been eaten and the leftovers stored in the fridge. They all noticed, in that passive way one notices the wind blowing the leaves of a tree, but none of them could find the strength to ask him where he was going or why. Since his office at the Warehouse was gone, Artie had rented a storage space in town, and everyone assumed that's where he went when he left each morning.

What they didn't know was that he was working on a way to bring the Warehouse back.

Pete and Myka had seen Artie holding the mysterious pocket watch, had heard him say that they hadn't lost yet, but in the wake of their grief they had forgotten his implicit promise that he could save the Warehouse. But Artie hadn't forgotten; MacPhearson had left that pocket watch for him for a reason, and as the Warehouse had gone up in a spectacular blaze around them, he finally realized why.

So he went to work.

He wanted to figure out exactly how the watch worked before attempting anything extravagant with it. He also had to make sure that the use of the pocket watch didn't come with any negative side effects. If the Warehouse had still been standing, he would simply have typed the information into the computer and come up with every known fact about the watch. But without the artifact database, and with Mrs. Fredrick gone, he was forced to experiment to find out the properties of the artifact.

He started out small, rewinding the watch only a few seconds at a time to see what exactly it would do. At first, it didn't appear to do anything. Artie moved things around in his storage space-cum-office and then rewound. Miraculously, everything returned to its original place in the blink of an eye.

Eventually he began trying it at the Bed & Breakfast, twisting the knob at the top of the watch and observing as Pete appeared back in the doorway to the living room after having walked through it only moments before, seemingly no worse for wear.

Finally, he was ready.

The progression of days at the Bed & Breakfast went by mostly unnoticed by the occupants. Until the Regents told them what their next move was, all they could do was sit around and wait. Myka woke up around 4 a.m. in a cold sweat more often than not, and when she fumbled for her book on the nightstand, she sometimes caught the date flashing on her digital alarm clock, but as soon as she looked away from the clock the number slipped from her mind.

The day Artie rewound the watch began the same as all the others had for the past month. Myka woke up a little after four and read until she heard Pete on the stairs around nine. She vaguely remembered it was Saturday, but the day didn't have any more significance than any other.

And then, standing at the top of the stairs, book in hand on her way to breakfast, she heard something that made her heart stop.

A warm, evenly pitched voice with a crisp British accent lilted up the stairs and froze Myka in her tracks, and the first thought that rushed into her head was 'no.'

_No no no no no no no no no._

Myka couldn't think anything else as she gingerly descended the stairs, gripping the banister to steady both her footsteps and the dizzying pounding of 'no' in her head.

She stood on the last step, her left hand wrapped so tightly around the banister it began to cramp. She couldn't force her bare feet to take the last step onto the floor.

Claudia rounded the corner of the foyer, angry tears in her eyes, on her way to her room, but when she saw Myka standing there, clutching her book to her chest with a look of shock and fear written across her face, she stopped. Neither of them spoke; Claudia tugged her sleeve down and wiped her nose. Then she set her jaw, making some sort of decision in her head, and walked over to where Myka stood, still staring toward the living room over Claudia's shoulder.

Claudia silently threaded her arm through Myka's and pulled, gently. Myka stumbled off the bottom stair and let herself be led the short distance down the front hall to the living room.

Claudia tried to lead Myka through the doorway, but as soon as she glimpsed a dark head facing away from them on the couch she wrenched her arm from Claudia's grasp and shoved the book she was holding into Claudia's hands. As she pulled away, Myka felt something inside her snap—all the grief, sorrow, and anger she'd been keeping at bay since the Warehouse was obliterated finally came rushing up and out, and her face became contorted with it all. She pushed Claudia's fluttering hands aside and slowly walked into the room and around the couch to face the woman who had given her life for her and her friends without a second thought.

Helena immediately stood and Myka didn't even have time to think about how awful she looked before her hand flew up and struck Helena across the face with all the strength she had left in her body.

Had she expected it, Helena could've easily grabbed Myka's wrist before her hand made contact with her face, but even after she felt the sting of Myka's open palm on her cheek her hands remained at her sides in shock. Even Myka, amid the anger and hurt on her face, looked a bit surprised at her violence, but only for a moment.

"How _dare_ you," Myka seethed, her voice barely above a whisper as she stood in front of Helena with her fists clenched. Claudia, Pete, and Artie were still standing around them in the living room, but neither woman noticed their presence, and they quietly looked at each other. Claudia motioned towards the door, and they all slipped out, leaving the two women to resolve whatever was brewing between them.

"Myka, what do you mean? What's wrong? I don't unders—"

"You stood there and _smiled_ at me through that damn barrier before you _burned to death._ You told me I was the one person who knew you better than anyone else and then you killed yourself to save me." Myka was shaking now, her eyes fierce. "Do you know how many times I've wished that I had died in that explosion? Do you know what it's been like to simply be alive after everything I loved went up in smoke?"

Helena's eyes flickered to the floor, then back up to meet Myka's. "Yes, I believe I have some idea of what that's like." Her voice came out as a strangled whisper.

Myka couldn't meet Helena's eyes, her gaze hovering around Helena's sternum. It struck her how bare Helena's neck looked, and her hand automatically made its way up to clutch at the locket she now wore around her own neck. Helena reached toward her then, both arms outstretched to pull Myka into an embrace, but Myka's eyes flew up and the ferocity Helena saw there as Myka quickly stepped out of her reach made the older woman flinch and withdraw her arms. She wrapped them around her own stomach, then, trying with all her might not to reach out to Myka again, to pull the taller woman into her arms and never let go again. But Myka had her arms folded tightly across her chest, one hand still wrapped around the locket at her throat.

"After Sam… after what happened…" Myka's voice sounded hollow, empty as she stared at Helena's feet. "I swore to myself that I would never love someone like that again. I would never let anyone have that much power over me, ever, ever again." She shook her head and pulled her arms tighter around herself as she shuddered at the memory of Sam.

Helena began to step forward, pulled in a breath as if to speak, but Myka rushed on, needing to get everything out before Helena spoke.

"And then, you appeared. Over one hundred years old, the mind behind my favorite stories, the real H.G. Wells who saved my life with her grappler and then told me I could keep it. A beautiful, daring, brave genius who just waltzed into my life and fucked everything up." Myka held herself very still as she spoke. "I believed in you. I believed in you and then you tried to end the world and then I believed in you again, finally, after months of feeling betrayed and angry and hurt. And then you were finally solid again, finally not a hologram, you were back and I thought I finally had you, forever, and then you blew yourself up. You were smiling at me and I wanted to tell you I loved you but I couldn't, because it felt like that would make everything worse, you would die and I would have loved you out loud and you would be dead." Myka's voice grew thick and her eyes were overflowing with tears that fell slowly down her cheeks when she blinked. "But I didn't tell you. And then you were gone and you never knew and now you're back, here, alive, but I'm so afraid that you're going to go away again."

They both stood silently for a moment, Myka still staring at the ground in front of Helena's feet, Helena scanning Myka's face, shocked at the confession that had just tumbled from her mouth. Then, Myka stumbled forward and threw herself into the arms Helena had opened as soon as she saw Myka move. The younger woman buried her face in Helena's shoulder, her tears coming freely now, sobs wracking her thin form. Helena wrapped her arms around Myka, stroking her back and her hair and holding on as tightly as she could.

"I love you, too, Myka," she whispered into her curly hair. "I love you more than I have ever loved another human being since Christina died. I just wanted you to be safe. I needed to save you."

Claudia peeked around the corner. She had been eavesdropping; she didn't want things to get out of hand, wanted to be able to step in if things got any uglier. But all she saw when she looked into the room was Myka and Helena, wrapped in the small world of their embrace, swaying back and forth. Maybe everything was going to be okay after all.


End file.
